Find My iPhone is a great feature to have if you’ve ever realised you’ve misplaced your iPhone. You can not only track the device, but also post a message on the Lock screen asking a finder to contact you …

A thief who stole more than 100 smartphones from people attending the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was caught thanks to Find My iPhone, say police. One report said that the number of devices found in his backpack was 130.

When festival-goers noticed their iPhones had been taken, they activated Find My iPhone to track the location of their devices. They then identified someone whose movements around the site matched the moving dot.

An Apple patent noted by Patently Apple describes how iOS devices could make it very easy to police to identify thieves by automatically taking photos and video of them, and capturing their fingerprint data via the Touch ID sensor.

Update 2: Apple is reporting that the iCloud.com services have also been restored.

Update: Apple is reporting that the availability of some services has now been restored but several features of iCloud are still down and undergoing maintenance.

As noted by Apple’s system status page, a multitude of Apple services are currently experiencing instability and downtime for some users. The affected services include the App Store, Mac App Store, Apple TV services, iTunes In The Cloud and critical features like Find My iPhone. We have also had a few reports of Apple Music downtime, seemingly repeating the outage yesterday, but Apple’s official status report does not mention any problems with Apple Music at this time.

An 18-year-old girl reportedly kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend has been safely rescued by police after her mother tracked her location using Find My iPhone. CNBC reports that the victim was found more than 150 miles away from home.

Anyone who has ever accidentally left behind their iPhone or iPad in a public place like a coffee shop will know the sinking feeling in your stomach the moment you realize you’ve done it. Even if you rush back just one or two minutes later, you know there’s a high chance that the device will be gone.

If the worst happens, and you have another device with you, Find My iPhone lets you track the stolen device – except thieves tend to know this, and all they have to do to prevent it is to power-down their ill-gotten gains. This can be done while the device is locked, with no Touch ID or passcode access needed …